A Different Idea of Beautiful

By Jeannette Madden
Contributing Writer

Brooklyn, New York’s sort of punk rockers Pterodactyl will be at The Aquarium Tuesday night, December 6th, in support of their new album Spills Out (Brah Records). Made up of Matt Marlin on drums, Joe Kremer on guitar and vocals, Jesse Hodges on bass guitar and vocals, and for their tour they’ve added Duncan Gamble on keyboards, Pterodactyl released Spills Out on November 15th and it sounds to be their most progressive and melodic album to date. Kremer took some time out of his Thanksgiving on the west coast to talk about the band, their new album, and the sweetness of their music.

When asked about how they create their music, Kremer said that “The writing process starts out with just us playing together, letting the tape run and just go. We then listen to the practice recordings, just hours and hours of stuff, and we pick out the stuff that we think has potential and we hone it. Some stuff rises to the top and that becomes our record. As the thing takes shape we can make more educated decisions on what ideas are going to fit well with the other things that we’ve gravitated towards. But there’s definitely not one person who writes the songs and brings them to practice. When we get further along we individually sort of insert our own chunks of creativity on them like just at home, especially with lyrics or particular melodies. But the bulk of the process is with everyone together, or at least that definitely was the case for this record. It was a priority to do it that way.”

I pointed out that I heard a lot of melody on Spills Out, a sweetness I wasn’t expecting. Kremer explained that on their self titled first album, “there are hints of melody and there’s one song in particular called “Esses” that sounds very different than the other songs on the record. The rest of the stuff is kind of squawky and grating and more about the energy than it is about the melody or chord progressions of any kind. But those themes were there from the very beginning, like we always knew that we could sing but we came from a punk background and we were sort of puzzled as to how we were going to use our vocals. Like we’ve become more comfortable with it and it’s become more exciting to pursue that. It’s been as exciting as it was in the beginning to just like plug in and make the loudest noise that we could, it’s as exciting these days to write chord progressions and real melodies and work on the harmonies. It’s just that our priorities change as we continue to work on music together. Otherwise it would be kind of stale and boring.

I brought up how in a recent interview they were quoted as saying they wanted to make things that are beautiful. “I guess it’s less a matter of wanting to make things that are beautiful,” said Kremer, “and sort of a different idea of what is beautiful and what is interesting. Jesse’s not yet thirty but Matt and I are over thirty so it does seem a little bit predictable that we rounded off the edges of our sound but I don’t think that that’s totally the case. I think that there’s a lot of stuff on this record that is as kind of gnarly as anything ever was but because it’s juxtaposed against a song that’s way more lush and conventional than anything we’ve done before that’s not people’s reaction. But I think that as people spend more time with the music it’ll become clear that we’re not just over the hill aging punk rockers.”

Kremer described Spills Out as having darker themes but said it also has themes that are
much brighter, “entwined like a spectrum of expression”. He also said that on Spills Out,
they “became more willing to be honest about who we are. It became a priority to make the
music about that, not just about high energy or creating some psychedelic soundscape. I’d like
to think that we’ve retained a lot of those elements but to bring things a step further into real
expression.”

You can hear how Pterodactyl was able to have a young Polish artist named Otecki design their
cover art, how they bring their explosion of sound to their live shows and fan reaction to the
musical changes on Spills Out by listening to the podcast of this interview!

Watch Pterodactyl’s video for their new song “School Glue” here: http://bit.ly/sUFcV8

Listen to Pterodactyl’s new song “Nerds” here: http://bit.ly/uatENi

Get more info on Pterodactyl here: http://bit.ly/4x8KU4

Questions and comments: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

IF YOU GO:

WHO: Pterodactyl
WHEN: Tuesday, December 6
WHERE: The Aquarium 10:00 pm show
INFO: 21+ $6